Why?That's how the current layout is, save for Org Supported Contests and Video Editing Software. Part of the goal here is to clean up the board index, another part is to keep things visible, yet another is to group things logically. Flattening would run counter to at least one of those goals.

I don't see "maintain unnecessary complexity" as a goal, but that's what the proposed hierarchy does.

There is no need to separate AMV scene discussions from an Anime Music Videos board; a post about the former is perfectly on-topic in the latter, and a board without that additional hierarchy is a simpler one. People tend to use their browser capabilities (i.e. history, bookmarks) and forum capabilities (notifications) to come back to popular threads.

Retrieval and query can be addressed in ways that don't involve unnecessary, vague categorization, like curated tags or (better yet) not using a discussion forum as an information repository.

Kariudo wrote:

I Fight For The Users wrote:There is no need for "General [X]". Seriously, what kind of category name is "General"? You might as well just call it "Other" or "Uncategorized". Move "General [X]" into X.

It'd be a general name . If we change to "General [X]" into X, we'd have X appear twice in some locations (Category - Anime, Forum - Anime...same with AMVs when no contests are running) which comes across as tacky.

Then flatten the resulting duplications into the same forum, and eliminate unnecessary categorization. "Anime" is fine as a top-level board; "Anime Discussion" is redundant, because it's an online bulletin board system. Of course it's discussion; you don't need to put that in the title.

"Anime Music Videos" and "Anime" are not the same term, so that's fine too.

Kariudo wrote:

I Fight For The Users wrote:There is no need to separate video software help by program; people tend to include a popular name of the program in their post title.

I count on people following naming conventions as much as I count on people reading stickies before posting. I believe there's still value in maintaining the visual separation. It cuts down on the scanning that people experienced with a particular program have to do when looking for a thread they can help in. It also makes a clear delineation for new(er) members looking for help.

Permit posts in those forums to be tagged as program-specific; get moderators to maintain those tags. That eliminates some scanning. Make those tags selectable and you'll eliminate all scanning.

Your last point doesn't make a lot of sense, as the program-specific sub-boards are currently only visible as small text on the main index. It's much easier to ask for help in a "video software help" board with useful filtering than it is to go through a tediously small list of links.

Kariudo wrote:

I Fight For The Users wrote:Merge Org Redesign into the top-level Website forum, and grant me the ability to sticky selected threads in that subforum.

Why merge them? The sub-forum is achieving its goal in my eyes.

How naïve do you think I am?

The sub-forum has achieved dick. The proportion of people who seem to be interested in reworking this site to those who have actually commented on the active product remains frustratingly, hugely tilted towards the former side.

I Fight For The Users wrote:The sub-forum has achieved dick. The proportion of people who seem to be interested in reworking this site to those who have actually commented on the active product remains frustratingly, hugely tilted towards the former side.

Actually, now that I think about it, a better approach is to eliminate that subforum entirely, get the current product under beta.animemusicvideos.org (or something) and redirect discussion to that product's Github Issues tracker, where discussion is actually actionable.

gotegenks wrote:move opinion exchange to right under amv announcements, as the two go hand in hand somewhat and some people don't enter conventions or contests at all so it makes sense to me to have those before contest stuff.

I Fight For The Users wrote:The sub-forum has achieved dick. The proportion of people who seem to be interested in reworking this site to those who have actually commented on the active product remains frustratingly, hugely tilted towards the former side.

Actually, now that I think about it, a better approach is to eliminate that subforum entirely, get the current product under beta.animemusicvideos.org (or something) and redirect discussion to that product's Github Issues tracker, where discussion is actually actionable.

I disagree.

The forum has obviously not "achieved dick", because my thread in that forum is what brought on this.I agree very few people use it, but let's face it, here: the org has been "under redesign" for at least 2 - 3 years now. That forum is a good place to slap down ideas and perhaps work on them later.

Case in point - I proposed several of these changes in february. It's June now. If there was no forum, but rather a test site(if I'm reading what you say correctly), then there'd be no "look back at what other people suggested a long time a go".

While a beta site may get things done faster (rogue programmers/coders doing random sandbox shit), it would likely not get implemented simply because it wasn't done by doki (or whomever happens to be webdev now). Not saying it wouldn't be a cool idea. Just hard to police.

I don't think AMV Suggestions should be renamed. Not every thread on there is looking for certain scenes for a video. I see a ton of "Hey, it would be awesome if someone could edit X song with X anime." Some people even give out concepts and stuff that they can't do and want to share with someone else so they can try it out.

I Fight For The Users wrote:There is no need to separate video software help by program; people tend to include a popular name of the program in their post title.

I count on people following naming conventions as much as I count on people reading stickies before posting. I believe there's still value in maintaining the visual separation. It cuts down on the scanning that people experienced with a particular program have to do when looking for a thread they can help in. It also makes a clear delineation for new(er) members looking for help.

Permit posts in those forums to be tagged as program-specific; get moderators to maintain those tags. That eliminates some scanning. Make those tags selectable and you'll eliminate all scanning.

Your last point doesn't make a lot of sense, as the program-specific sub-boards are currently only visible as small text on the main index. It's much easier to ask for help in a "video software help" board with useful filtering than it is to go through a tediously small list of links.

I disagree here. It's way easier for me to go to Vegas subforum from the main page (even if it's via "tediously small list, whose size seems okay to me) than go into a cluttered list and then filter the right threads. And mods =/= all people who would like to reply.And selectable tags? That's quite a bit of work from programmers, mods, and people (and if people fail even more work on mods). The current system works just as fine without unnecessary work from all parties involved.

I Fight For The Users wrote:The proportion of people who seem to be interested in reworking this site to those who have actually commented on the active product remains frustratingly, hugely tilted towards the former side.

Actually - there were quite a few people posting in the redesign forum a while back. Since this whole idea of a redesign has languished for years, rehashing those old threads is seen as dead horse beating. People have said what they wanted to and don't feel the need to rehash that. It's all still there to read.

I wouldn't expect you to get much more than that. There are under 50 people that are really active here on the forums.

I would say combine all of the proposed:Footage Help (Combining Avisynth & Capture/Rip)Video Hardware Discussion (renaming Video Hardware Help)Compression, Encoding, and Converting

Into one go-to place for technical help. We don't get that many posts these days, so I doubt it would get flooded with content or anything. And a lot of the time these forums can have overlapping content.

I second pacotacoshell about not renaming AMV Suggestions. People use that forum to offer or seek suggestions about anything amv related. The word "scene" narrows the topic down to anime, implying that you shouldn't post there asking about songs that might fit your concept. I realize 'recommended amvs' and 'amv suggestions' sound similar, but if the subforums are right next to each other, then everyone should know they're different (and hopefully enter them to find out how).

I agree with moving "Opinion Exchange" up beneath "Amv announcements". The op exchange has nothing to do with organized group activities, and gets lost between the contest and mep sections.

I also like having the editing help section broken according to programs. Whether all the sections are active or not, they have great threads archived that answer most questions anyone might have. I haven't had much luck searching by tags in other forums either because people can't consistently maintain the tags, or because the search engines can't handle them properly. I like being able to narrow the search to the section dedicated to that particular program.

I agree with ifftu, amv suggestions could go and we could just post that in general amv. Since those are slightly more important threads (to the op anyway) it would help them get replies and be more beneficial, and make the forum layout simpler

Sq, hes workinf directly with the mods (i assume) so mods reading what he posts is a given and doesnt help much, hes wanting to achieve more than just mods' and a few members' participation. But bashar has a good point about all those old threads.

I agree with Pacotacpshell and Arigatomina regarding the AMV suggestions, renaming it to AMV scenes suggestions is a bad idea because of all the posts asking for songs or ideas in general for other people to use, but I can definatly see how there can be confusion between it and Recommended AMVs. Maybe something like AMV Inspiration or Brainstorming would be a better title. Also I personally don't really like it becoming a sub-group in fear of it dying out

Another thing is to give The Lip Flapper its own sub-group in The General page because whenever I go there I also see several different Lip Flapper interviews near the top.

Zarxrax wrote:Into one go-to place for technical help. We don't get that many posts these days, so I doubt it would get flooded with content or anything. And a lot of the time these forums can have overlapping content.

^ THIS.

Skimmed this thread and from a design standpoint I don't see people asking the right questions about why and when to have subforums instead of just 1 single forurm for a site. The purposes of of having subforums is to filter off conversation so one place isn't flooded. If a site has 100 users you don't make 15 different subforums just to categorize posts.

You need to look at the metrics of post activity. If there is not high traffic it's better to have one larger encompassing subforum so it actually has activity and people are aware of new posts. This also makes moderation easier.